Meal Prep 9/25

Hello! So, I have this idea that I would eventually like to put up weekly what our meal plan/grocery list/meal prep looked like and share any tips or anything. This is my off week from dinners (more on that later) so I thought I’d give it a go. Since it’s only breakfast and lunch, this should be pretty short. I may or may not be able to post this every week, but I’m going to try and we’ll see how it goes. Assuming I post next week, that post will begin with a recap of how this week went. Let you know what worked, what didn’t, stuff like that.

So here we go!

You can see what we chose for the week above. We used to eat the same as each other, but we really don’t have the same tastes and it wasn’t always working out. Justin is pretty content eating the exact same thing every single day. I swear, if he was a bachelor he’d live on produce and nuts and never grow tired of it. Weirdo. (I still love you!) I like a little more variety in my diet.

Justin’s prep was pretty basic. The oatmeal he’s having is a baked pumpkin oatmeal recipe from Budget Bytes. We almost always have a pan of that each week because it’s so stinking good. I cut it into 9 squares and it lasts all week. He thaws his blueberries overnight and makes a parfait thing in the morning. Sometimes I make the granola, but lately we’ve been buying some pre-made out of the bulk bin at the grocery store just to save some time. He cuts up broccoli, cauliflower and carrots at the start of the week and everything else he portions out daily. Easy peasy.

Mine’s slightly more entailed. I work part time, so I have more time to do prep throughout the week. This week I plan to cook up some oatmeal each morning, stir in some of the cinnamon apples I made and then heat up some of the sausage. I cooked 3 lbs of apples in my slow cooker (recipe to come at a later date, I promise.) While the apples were going, I formed the breakfast sausage I bought into little patties and baked them (yes, baked) for 12ish minutes at 350. Baking them is the way to go. I used 2 lbs of sausage, which made 15 little patties. I’d have to stand over a stove for like 30 minutes or more to get those babies cooked. Instead, I just spaced them out on a large baking sheet that had an edge to it and popped them in the oven. I flipped them halfway through and pulled them out when the internal temperature was in a non-food poison range.

While all that was going, I hardboiled 4 eggs for my tuna salad. (Place eggs in pot, cover with water, bring to boil, remove from heat, place lid on, wait 10 minutes, run under cold water.) My tuna salad is basic: 2 cans tuna, 4 eggs, 1/4 cup mayo, 1/4 cup dijon mustard, 1/4 cup pickled jalapeno juice, 1/4 cup pickled jalapenos, salt and pepper. I’m only making 2 days worth at a time so it doesn’t get funky. I already have it scheduled in my bullet journal to make it again Wednesday and Friday. I’ll have my tuna with 1/2 an avocado, raw carrots and some sweet potato chips I bought.

For a snack, I just grabbed some Larabars and a couple protein bars that were on sale. I don’t eat my snack everyday, but if I don’t have one in my purse, I’m more likely to cave into cookie cravings at work.

Normally, I would be doing dinner prep stuff too, but not this week. If you watched my video I posted in the middle of the month giving you a tour of my freezer, you’d know that it’s the last week of the month. I typically spend the first 3 weeks of the month stocking my freezer with dinners and then the last week of the month, I only eat dinners from the freezer. It helps keep things rotating out, gives me a break from cooking and helps with our budget. The last week of the month is a good week to either stock up on kitchen essentials, or if we went over budget, just try to eat cheaply. It all balances out in the end.

I spent about an hour in the kitchen today prepping everything. The biggest thing you can do to save yourself time is learn to streamline things. Knowing what order to do things to be the most efficient is key to not losing your mind. I’m going to share the order that I did things each week, just so you can kind of see what I mean.